Southern California -- this just in

Charles Manson follower seeks freedom, more than 40 years after LaBianca murders

July 6, 2010 | 8:01
am

Leslie Van Houten will ask before a parole board on Tuesday to be released from prison -- four decades after being convicted in the Manson murders.

Van Houten, 60, was convicted in the 1969 killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their home in Los Feliz. She has sought parole more than a dozen times -- and has always been rejected.

Leslie Van Houten, a former homecoming princess from Monrovia, became
alienated from her family as a teenager and said she was introduced to
Manson by a boyfriend. She said she came to view Manson as Jesus Christ
and believed in his bizarre plan to commit murders and blame African
Americans in hopes of sparking a race war.

"I'm
deeply ashamed of it," she told a parole board in 2002. "I take very seriously not just the
murders but what made me make myself available to someone like Manson."

Van
Houten has been characterized by supporters as the least culpable
member of the so-called Manson family. She did not take part in the
Aug. 9, 1969, killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others at Tate's
rented Benedict Canyon home.

She did, however, willingly join
Manson and others the following night when they invaded the LaBianca
home, chosen at random. She held down Rosemary LaBianca while she was
stabbed by an accomplice and, when told to "do something" by cohort
Charles "Tex" Watson, she stabbed the woman about two dozen times in the back.

Los
Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay told a parole board in 2002 that such
"vicious" acts make parole for Van Houten at any time unwise. Kay, who
took part in four of the Manson trials, has attended all 58 parole
hearings for each of the five imprisoned murderers.